Viral video is officially defined as “a video that becomes popular through the process of Internet sharing, typically through internet media sharing websites.” Hard to believe they date back as far as 1995! Remember videos like the “Dancing Baby” and “Peanut butter Jelly time”?

In more recent years, corporate video production companies have been bringing out viral videos to advertise and promote, creating a whole new category for video production services. Using the “real” and “raw” style of their viral inspirations; companies such as Levis, Nike, EA and Subaru have all caught the viral bug and brought their own productions to sites such as Youtube.

Our top 10 corporate advertising viral videos

Ten

This one doesn’t really fit in with the “raw” and “real” feel that I had described earlier but we felt it was just too funny to leave out of our top 10! We love him, The Old Spice Guy

Nine

Who would have thought watching Guys backflipping into Jeans could be so fascinating?

Levis obviously did.

Eight

This fantastic viral even caught the attention of TV show, Mythbusters, to find out how “Real” it truly is.

Here is Quicksilver, promoting themselves with “Original Thinking”

Seven

The internet is full of game reviewers and in this fantastic EA viral,

Tiger Woods gets his own back!

Six

Wayne Rooney has starred in two fantastic virals for Nike and it was just too difficult to chose which one we preferred…

So hey, why not… here is Wayne Rooney with Nike
…and here he is again!

Five

This viral not only promotes a product, it also promotes self-esteem to women.

A fantastic time-lapse produced by Dove.

Four

A Fantastic viral of men catching sunglasses on their faces. It never really mentions who or what it is advertising…

but somehow you just know its Rayban.

Three

This one is a classic. Inspired by the many “Mentos and cola” videos all over the web,

Carlsberg conducted their own Mentos experiment.

Two

Levis have managed to secure two spots in our top 10. We love this video. A wonderfully executed idea that must have taken FOREVER to put together;

Here is Levis – Man walks across America.

One

This video is the perfect example of “home video style” advertising. Using a fantastic balance of special effects and camera phone technology…

We feel that Sprite deserve our top spot!

The event took place with about 800 relatives of current serving soldiers (16 Air assault Brigade) invited to enjoy the day.

Girl group “The Saturdays” put on a full hour performance in support of the troops. The girls were wonderful, giving time for media interviews and even found time to sign t-shirts for the children and also a couple of servicemen. Other highlights included a smoking parachute jump, a cannon display and a great BBQ for all the families.

This means that your website and online advertising needs to represent you now more than ever.

The 96 second window of opportunity

This is how long the average internet user is likely to spend on your website before deciding whether to stay or head back to google… look at it as your very own shop window. The more appealing and professional you make it, the more likely your customers are to pop in and have a browse.

They say a picture can tell a thousand words; Your average website video will have 25 frames (pictures) per second… this means that in a 96 second video you would have told 2,400,000 words… that’s the equivalent of reading War and Peace 4 times.

So now you’ve decided to use a short video on your homepage; next step is to decide how to decorate your shop window. Your video can be a corporate video or you could show testimonials or product demonstration, or even something do something really clever like a viral, which can be used, both on your homepage and as an enjoyable video on youtube (which links viewers back to your site). Some of our personal favourite viral videos are Hunter shoots bear and cute girl has a catchy dance.

Now its important to remember production quality; just like you wouldn’t want a dusty display in your shop front, you wouldn’t want low video production on your homepage. In come the production companies, with so many to chose from I would say the best way to decide would be to go and do some window shopping. Your looking for a good production and post production house with a display that reflects what you want.

We’ve taken our own advice with a 60 second (1,500,000 words) showreel on our homepage. Why not take a peek in our shop window?

When the DSLR first went video, it faced a number of usability flaws, which in recent developments have mostly been overcome. The major problem these SLRs faced was the models shape, lacking the comfort and handling of the common video camera. This problem has been overcome by the invention of many rigs and attachments you can fix onto your SLR; another amazing development in this field is the Panasonic AG-AF 101, the first DSLR camera designed as a video camera.

Many production companies are discussing their move over to DSLRs in both the use of corporate productions and television. For example, C4’s Inside Incredible Athletes was partly shot on DSLR. Even USA’s hit drama House has filmed their season 6 finale entirely on the Canon EOS 5D Mark II.

A couple of drawbacks we found is that DSLRs aren’t quite perfect for a number of filming styles such as sport and documentary due to the delicate focus and memory capabilities. We have also heard that the SLRs aren’t perfect for still photography meaning that these great new toys are more for the cinematographers than they are the photographers.

There are many models to choose from now, ranging from your basic Home use (advertised as Childs play) Nikon D5000 or the Canon counterpart 500D all the way to the more professional end Canon and Panasonic models.

With quality like this, its no wonder so many London Production companies are moving over.

Firstly we had to decide what would look good reversed so have been researching some beautifully made videos.  Our favourite is, of course, Spike Jones’ music video for Pharcyde’s song Drop, and a great viral video using the technique (amongst others) is the Ray Ban sunglasses catching video.

Our second issue was that of making our tracking shots as stable as possible in post production.  We used a stedi-cam arm for most of the shots, but even with this we needed the help of the amazing Final Cut plug-in Lock and Load by CoreMelt.  This software totally smooths out even hand held shots to make them stedi-cam smooth – we couldn’t believe how good the results were.  This plug in could come in very handy on our Pedal To Paris 2010 trip in a couple of weeks

We are really looking forward to using these cameras during our coverage of Pedal to Paris – with the potential of giving them to competitors to attach to their handlebars to capture those extreme moments and close-ups that we otherwise may miss, and sticking them to roofs of cars, on helmets, feet and pretty much anywhere else!